According to SocGen’s research note, the China housing numbers keep getting worse.

Highlights below:

Chinese property sales and prices have made for dour reading recently. Property sales value contracted 20% year on year in the two months ending in February. This is not only the worst result since the property slide in 2008 – it’s the worst result since the series began in 2006.

It’s particularly worrying to note that the slope of the fall is as sharp as the decline in January 2008. Back then, sales fell by a further 20% year on year after the January decline. This time, the comparables are a bit better, since property sales were rising through 2007, and have been stagnant over 2011. But if we assume that the monthly sales patterns in 2008 repeat in 2012, then sales should trough at around -24% year on year

Chinese property prices released today made for equally glum reading. Prices fell in 45 of 70 cities in February from January, according to prices released on Sunday by the statistics bureau. The average decline across the cities is now around 1.5% year on year. This is similar to the 1.3% drop seen in the old series (shown in red on Chart 2), but arguably the results are a lot worse.

As the chart shows, the old series was more volatile than the new series on the way up – and so the new series also probably softens the extent of the fall on the way down.